London: A bakery in Belfast has won the right to refuse to make a cake featuring Sesame Street’s Bert and Ernie under the slogan “Support Gay Marriage”.

The long running case over what has been dubbed “the most expensive cake in UK history”, was supported by Northern Ireland’s Equality Commission, which argued that refusing to bake the cake was an unlawful act of discrimination against the customer, a gay man who supports a campaign for Northern Ireland to end its ban on same-sex marriage.

The UK's highest court ruled unanimously on Wednesday, however, that the bakers – a husband-and-wife team who held conservative Christian views on same-sex marriage - were not obliged to supply a cake iced with a message with which they profoundly disagreed.

They had a right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion, and to freedom of expression, the Supreme Court said.

Advertisement

“The bakery would have refused to supply this particular cake to anyone, whatever their personal characteristics,” court president Lady Hale said in delivering the majority opinion. “There was no discrimination on grounds of sexual orientation.”

She said the case was different from the Masterpiece Cakeshop case in Colorado this year, where a US Supreme Court majority recognised that a baking business could not generally refuse to supply products and services for gay weddings.

Ashers bakery owners Daniel and Amy McArthur talk to the media outside the Supreme Court in London on Wednesday.Credit:PA/AP

That case showed, Lady Hale said, there was a difference between refusing to serve a particular customer, and refusing to decorate it with a particular message as in the Northern Ireland case.

She added: “I do not seek to minimise or disparage the very real problem of discrimination against gay people”, saying everyone was “born free and equal in dignity and rights”.

“It is deeply humiliating, and an affront to human dignity, to deny someone a service because of that person’s race, gender, disability, sexual orientation or any of the other protected personal characteristics. But that is not what happened in this case and it does the project of equal treatment no favours to seek to extend it beyond its proper scope.”

>Credit:Matt Golding

Lady Hale also ruled that the bakery had not breached the customer’s right to protection against discrimination on the grounds of political beliefs.

“The objection was not to Mr Lee because he, or anyone with whom he associated, held a political opinion supporting gay marriage,” she said. “The objection was to being required to promote the message on the cake.

“It was not as if he were being refused a job, or accommodation, or baked goods in general, because of his political opinion… it is more akin to a Christian printing business being required to print leaflets promoting an atheist message.”

Loading

The cake would have cost £36.50 ($67). The BBC reported that the Equality Commission had spent £250,000 of public money on the case and the bakery more than £200,000, paid by charity and lobby group The Christian Institute.

The dispute began in 2014, after a motion to allow same-sex marriage was narrowly defeated in a vote in the Northern Ireland Parliament.

Gay rights activist Gareth Lee ordered the cake for a private party marking the end of Northern Ireland's anti-homophobia week.

But he had ordered it from Ashers Baking Company, which unknown to him was run by a couple with strong conservative religious views (their bakery’s name came from a Bible verse).

Amy McArthur took the order to “spare Mr Lee any embarrassment”, but the couple then decided they “could not in conscience produce a cake with that slogan”, cancelled the order and offered Mr Lee a refund.

Gareth Lee, who ordered the cake, outside the Supreme Court in London after the ruling.Credit:PA/AP

Mr Lee then bought a similar cake elsewhere, but made a complaint to the Equality Commission, which decided to support his claim.

The bakery lost the case, appealed and lost again – but have won their appeal to the country’s highest court.

The bakery's general manager Daniel McArthur said he was delighted and relieved by Wednesday's ruling, the BBC reported.

Loading

"I know a lot of people will be glad to hear this ruling today, because this ruling protects freedom of speech and freedom of conscience for everyone," Mr McArthur said.

The Equality Commission said it was concerned the judgment would raise new uncertainty over how equality laws worked in the world of business.